If/when Discourse materializes the tray you'll be able to pick up the dimensional conduit that it comes along. Think of it as looking at the wiring of a circuit, and following the wiring as a signal is passed along it. Except instead of copper tracings, you're looking at pathways of folded space that more or less aren't coterminous with this dimension until they are used.

With this information you will be able to follow them to a dimensional "router" - a pocket of folded space that serves as an anchor for the lounge dimension that you're currently in. Using the arcanometer (i rolled a 6 for your skill roll) you'll be able to craft a device to help open that pocket and access the arcane device. With some study and re-engineering you think you'll be able to reconfigure the deflector array and basically rip a hole through this dimension into what you believe (hope) is the overarching dimensional space of the tower.

If the anchor is holding space "together" then it will rapidly unfold, if its holding space "apart" then it will rapidly fold. Right now those with experience in dealing with dimensions (Ingram and Cat) are under the impression that space is being held together in order to make the "infinite" waiting room (like taking a line and connecting the ends together to form a circle).

how about a baloon analogy, when you put a needle through the top of a balloon it doesn't burst, but when removed it does leave a small hole, again without collapsing the ballon. is that sort of thing possible here. is there some sort of pressure keeping the space from collapsing on itself that can be exploited?

I like that analogy CHG. I was thinking something similar though using more of a textile analogy. If we could worry a seam and slip through the weave rather than slice the knot, maybe we leave the cloth and ourselves intact.

I too tend to think of space as fabric, mainly because that's the terminology most commonly used. The idea of a "pressure" keeping space from collapsing is intriguing - on first blush i think that the pressure would be the repulsion of space and time to itself. a fundamental that says that the exact same matter or space can't be in the same location at the same time.

You can fold it into a higher dimensionality by giving the particles or points greater degrees of freedom, and that's what i was thinking of as sort of what's happening here. Extra space from the original section of cloth has been allowed to move in a new direction beyond what we experience in 3d space. An analogy would be to take a two dimensional world that exists only in one plane and then fold something off that plane at a right angle. To the 2d creatures in that world that section of space is simply gone. To us 3d creatures we can clearly see that section of space and its relationship to the parent dimension. But where the idea of pressure comes in for me is if you were to try to fold more stuff into that same space, there would be resistance as the original section of fabric isn't compatible with a new section of fabric being put "into" it.

Which i suppose brings up the question of being a good enough tailor to stitch the sections together...

My apologies for the overlong delay. I'm pretty clueless about what to do and I've gotten busy at work in the meantime. But yes, I'd say her approach would be along the lines of inserting a needle between the threads and using it as a lever to open up a hole.